Now
and again, you’ve got to push the ol’ envelope. You’ve
got to take a vessel you’re testing offshore in edgy weather and
really slam her around. Of course, under such conditions, you hope for
a good boat—or at least a safe boat—and prior to heading out,
you like to know that everyone onboard is down with the upcoming vicissitudes.

“You okay? You’re
not gonna get sick, are you?” yelled Jim Renfrow to the young fellow
seated all alone in the U-shape lounge at the rear of the cockpit of our
Fairline Targa 40 express. Renfrow is the sales honcho for Fairline of
North America, stateside distributor for the cruisers and motoryachts
built by Fairline in the U.K. The young fellow was a technowizard mechanic
who’d joined us to record fuel-burn data with a PDA-like gizmo he’d
attached with a long cord to one of our 303-bhp Volvo Penta D6-310/DP
stern-drive diesel powerplants. We were just clearing Fort Lauderdale’s
jetties, and the trail ahead looked stark. Seas, I guessed, were running
four to six. Winds were gusting to 24 mph or more. Squalls were squalling.
And I was as intent on the technowizard’s response as Renfrow presumably
was.

“Doin’ fine
so far…just fine,” he yelled back with cheery, thumbs-up enthusiasm.
I gave Renfrow a vaguely collusive grin, aimed the bow of the Targa into
a big headsea, eased the Volvo Penta electronic engine controls farther
ahead, and thanked my lucky stars I’d downed a half-tab of Dramamine
an hour earlier. I’ve been seafaring for 30 years now, but I still
get queasy in stuff like this, at least at first.

Whoeee! What a ride.
The deep-V hull forms naval architect Bernard Olesinski draws for Fairline
are justifiably renowned for their wave-chomping feistiness, and ours
was a wave chomper of the first order. With the Targa’s Duoprop drives
trimmed up a tad, the mains turning 3000 rpm, and the Bennett flaps adjusted
to compensate for wind-generated list, I quickly discovered I could bop
around the Gulf Stream dodging rain squalls, doing around 35 mph, going
up-sea, down-sea, and side-sea, with hellbent aplomb.

Visibility from the
helm was excellent. The power-assisted hydraulic steering was smooth.
Hardly any spray came aboard, except upon one occasion when I inappropriately
slacked off on the throttles, a move that doused us all with froth. The
bolster stabilizing my stance was comfortable, if a little low for my
5'11" frame. In fact, everything was percolating along quite nicely
until I headed south to actually begin recording test numbers in the flatter,
more top-hop-friendly waters prevailing in the lee of the jetties.

Certainly, the 43-mph
average WOT speed I was getting out of the Targa was both fun and impressive,
and so were the tight, stern-drive-enlivened hard-over turns. But repetitively
achieving these rousing parameters was a tad problematic for me, given
the difficulties I was having tweaking the drive trim. Pushing the trim
switches engendered no response from the digital readouts at times and
delayed or exaggerated responses at others. Either the Volvo Penta Electronic
Vessel Control (EVC) trim switch on the dashboard was malfunctioning,
or the EVC digital trim gauge was goofing up—exactly which I’m
not sure, but the upshot was I had to dial in drive trim intuitively.